[jdom-interest] new element methods?

[Elliotte Rusty Harold]

At 10:07 AM -0400 7/15/03, William Krick wrote:
>I was wondering if it might be useful to add some methods to Element...
>
>   getInt(java.lang.String name)
>
>   getFloat(java.lang.String name)
>
>   getBoolean(java.lang.String name)
>
>   getString(java.lang.String name)
>

Such methods did make it into one of the betas a couple of years ago. 
They were eventually removed on the grounds that there were just too 
many methods in the class. While every such method seems plausible 
and useful when considered in isolation, adding every convenience 
methods requested rapidly grows the class to the point of 
illegibility.

API size has a huge cost to ease of use, and there's a point at which 
it begins to grow exponentially. The first five or six methods are 
effectively free. The next five or six are worth the cost. Beyond 
that the cost starts skyrocketing, and it gets much worse with each 
batch of methods you add. 40 public members is really the effective 
outer limit of a good class. Beyond that it's time to start asking if 
you can refactor into more smaller classes. Element is already quite 
large. It really can't handle the weight of a whole new batch of 
convenience methods.
-- 

   Elliotte Rusty Harold
   elharo at metalab.unc.edu
   Processing XML with Java (Addison-Wesley, 2002)
   http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xmljava
   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0201771861/cafeaulaitA